[Peace-discuss] N-G letter

[Karen Medina]

Nicely done, Mort, nicely done.
-karen medina

On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Morton K. Brussel
<brussel at illinois.edu> wrote:
> In all the complaint and tumult about the tax increases passed by the
> Illinois legislature, I’d like people to consider our financial problems
> from another perspective. None of the recent letters in the N-G refer to the
> federal budget and the federal tax structure, to which we all contribute,
> more or less. No one mentioned the costs suffered due to our wars,
> occupations, military bases, “intelligence” and “national security”. These
> costs are upwards of one trillion dollars per year. Military, i.e. ”defense”
> outlays exist not only in weaponry and associated equipment such as planes,
> ships, guns, but in personnel, infrastructure, research and development,
> state department operations, propaganda, and CIA operations. All are
> associated with what Eisenhower called the “military and industrial
> complex”, but which also includes, unfortunately, an associated academic and
> media complex. Some small fraction of our population profit from all this
> expense, but the rest are in debt from it—just as some have become
> fantastically wealthy over the past few decades while the rest have suffered
> stagnated or diminished incomes.
>
> U.S. citizens do not seem to complain about their military, and so-called
> “national security”, burden, but the total state debt in the nation is now
> roughly 500 B$, and would be greatly alleviated if the cost of our military
> and imperial adventurism were reduced, say, by 50%; that would cover all of
> our states’ debts, and we could then better deal with our society’s many
> problems—environmental, educational, health, and infrastructure.
>
> Here, I do not delve into the moral aspects of U.S foreign policy: why are
> we killing and destroying in remote lands such as Iraq, Iran, Pakistan,
> Yeman, why are we supporting with our tax dollars repressive governments
> around the world such as Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt?
>
> Our national moral deficiencies in foreign policy are closely connected to
> our economic and social problems at home. Think about it!